DUSSELDORF PHOTOGRAPHY

Ben Brown Fine Arts presents a cardinal survey of photography originating from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf after 1976. The exhibition proffers the opportunity to experience varying interpretations of the German ‘New Objectivity’ style championed by Bernd and Hilla Becher side by side, including meditations on architecture and landscape by their former pupils Candida Höfer, Andreas Gursky, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff, Elger Esser and Thomas Struth, now delineated as the Düsseldorf School of Photography. These documentary representations of existing spaces are to be complemented by the photography of Thomas Demand, a former sculpture student at the Kunstakademie, whose practice encompasses modeling life-sized rooms and buildings for exacting depiction.

Meeting at an advertising agency in Dusseldorf in 1957, Bernd and Hilla Becher began photographing industrial structures in the mining area of the Ruhr district where Bernd spent his childhood. Always incorporating overcast skies to minimise shadows, their formalist images capture the near-sculptural majesty of cooling towers, lime kilns and bunkers, each relics of a vanishing industrial age. In direct contrast to the romantic worldview of their post-war contemporaries, the Bechers’ works began a revival of the New Objectivity photography that had prevailed in Germany in the 1920s and ‘30s, characterised by an unsentimental gaze. Following the pair’s international debut at Documenta 5 in Kassel, 1972, Bernd Becher was appointed professor of photography at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1976, which was increasingly renowned as the geocentric location for superior photographic training and technological advancement. Despite never teaching as a couple, the pair’s distinctive and erudite approaches combined to inspire a panorama of formalism for review, in London, from 4 September to 3 October, 2015.

A representaive of Ben Brown Fine Arts was invited to answer the following questions by close of business today. As opposed to answering these questions, we were responded to, with language worthy of professional inspection.

How many people / members of the Media did your press release get sent to on the 31. 07.2015?

Did a representative of Ben Brown Fine Arts sign off on the press release and image sheet for Dusseldorf Photography?

And if so:

Which representative of Ben Brown Fine Arts, gave a 'sign off' on the Image sheet and press release which was circulated to the media?

Was Ben Brown Fine Arts aware that full and correct copyright permissions had not been given for some or all of the images on the image sheet to be publicised for Dusseldorf photography, prior to your sending the sheet out before the summer break?

And if so:

Did representatives of Ben Brown Fine Arts collude with representatives of Reiber and Partners, and decide that the press release and the image sheet for Dusseldorf photography sent on 31.07.2015 should be circulated to the media without correct copyright publication permissions for some of or all of the images on the image sheet?